


Not Afraid of Spiders

by Annariel



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen, Spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 02:26:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9214778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annariel/pseuds/Annariel
Summary: The Seventh Doctor is definitely not afraid of spiders.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Liadt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liadt/gifts).



"Haunted houses are lame," Ace announced as she eyed the fairground attraction dubiously.

The front was decorated like some kind of cross between an American frontier shack and a country cottage with painted falling planks of wood and a thatched roof. A sign over the top proclaimed _£1 entrance if you dare!_. There was a metal walkway leading up to the entrance, an arched door with a skeleton peering around it, and a second leading down from the exit which had painted cobwebs.

The Doctor peered down at the device in his hand. "We need to get inside."

The ticket booth was empty which wasn't entirely surprising since, by Ace's reckoning it was around 3am in the morning. She shouldered her baseball bat and strode up the entrance walkway. She flicked the nose of the plywood skeleton as she passed through the thick drapes that covered the entrance and then stopped short. A model clown stood next to the passageway, shaking with silent laughter.

"Did you bring me here on purpose?" she asked the Doctor as he came through the entrance behind her.

"No, why?"

Ace gestured at the clown. "Clowns, you know I've got over clowns, right?"

"Have you?" the Doctor looked at her. Ace glared back. "Yes, I suppose you have."

The Doctor paused to examine the clown. Ace decide to ignore both him and it. She had a torch in her bag and she pulled it out and switched it on. She didn't need the kind of jump scares a fairground haunted house was likely to serve up, distracting her from whatever dangerous escapade they were currently engaged in.

In the light of the torch the peeling paintwork on the clown's face was obvious, as were the dingy drapes that enclosed the passageway and the ageing machinery that animated the clown. Ace transferred the torch to her left hand so that she still had a grip on the baseball bat in her right.

"Shall we continue?" she asked with fake politeness.

The Doctor straightened up from his examination of the clown. "You notice the power is still on?"

Ace regarded the machinery that was shaking the clown up and down. "OK, I'll give you that is odd at this time of night. Someone could just have left the generator on though."

"They could have." The Doctor tapped his umbrella significantly. "Oh well, nothing to do but explore! Unless you want to demolish that thing first?"

Ace gave the clown a look of contempt. It was, undeniably, creeping her out but she'd met really creepy clowns and an crude automaton didn't really match up.

"Nah, it's just naff," she said.

The Doctor grinned. "Very well."

He hooked his umbrella over his arm and proceeded through the next set of drapes. Ace followed. The area beyond was a larger space and, as revealed by Ace's torch, at least half of it was crawling with spiders which were far from robotic.

"Oh, gross!" Ace said.

"Succinctly put," the Doctor said. He took his hat off and clutched it to his chest but otherwise didn't move.

Ace edged around him and flashed the torch about the area. At the far end of the room some kind of technological contraption was wired into a generator. Behind it on some kind of small surface or table two model bats fluttered up and down, presumably also powered by the generator. Spiders were slowly creeping out of an opening in its centre, large spiders about the size of Ace's hand.

"What is that?" Ace asked.

"A wormhole generator, leading to wherever these spiders originate."

"You don't know?"

"Not for certain. Not yet."

One of the spiders scuttled across the floor towards them. Ace prodded it dubiously with her baseball bat and it scuttled away.

"The spiders don't seem intelligent enough to have built that machine," she said doubtfully.

"Difficult to tell. I suppose there could be some kind of hive mind in operation.n"

"Professor," Ace said warningly, she didn't want unlikely hypotheses right now.

"Yes, unlikely to be intelligent." He nodded vigorously.

"So who do you think set up that thing? Why are spiders coming through it? What's going on?"

"Well, I'd really need to examine the machine to work that out."

Ace gave him another hard stare. She wasn't yet convinced he didn't know exactly what was going on. The Doctor stared blandly back at her.

"So, why don't you go and examine the machine?" Ace asked.

Because, sure, there were spiders. There were big spiders. But in the grand scheme of things they didn't look that dangerous.

Ace took a couple of steps forward until she was on the edge of the the groups of spiders and prodded it with her foot. "Do they bite?" she asked.

"Probably," the Doctor said. He hadn't moved from his space by the door.

Ace looked down at her feet. Her Doc Martens were probably thick enough to resist any bites. Her tights were another thing but, just at the moment the spiders seemed to milling about fairly aimlessly.

"If you could possibly clear a path to the machine," the Doctor said. "I really need to get behind it."

He still hadn't moved and Ace viewed him sceptically. A spider ran over her foot. She kicked out and the spider flew off, disappearing into the semi-darkness. She took a step forward and kicked several more spiders aside. The others drew back from her. There was obviously some kind of semi-intelligence at play. She stepped forward again and then looked back at the Doctor.

"Hurry up, Professor. This path won't stay here long!"

"Too true!" The Doctor hurried up and stood at her shoulder.

Ace moved forward again. This close she could see there weren't _that_ many spiders and it wasn't too difficult to clear a path with her boots.

"Oh dear!" said the Doctor.

Ace turned to see a spider had climbed halfway up his trousers. He was shaking his leg somewhat ineffectually in an attempt to dislodge it.

"Kick properly Doctor don't stand there shaking your leg!"

The Doctor eyed her mournfully and shook his leg feebly again as a spider inched its way up the fabric.

Ace sighed noisily, pulled her hand into the padded sleeves of her jacket and then brushed the spider forcefully off the Doctor's leg. Moments later they reached the machine and were able to scramble up onto the table behind it, squeezing between the two model bats.

Ace looked at the carpet of spiders that had reformed between them and the entrance.

"What I really need is a flame thrower," she muttered.

A swift movement by her leg alerted Ace to the fact that a spider was with them on table. Instinctively she smashed it with her baseball bat.

"Ugh!" she said.

The Doctor turned it over with the tip of his umbrella to reveal circuitry inside the bloody remains. "They're half cyborg. I expect their hunting behaviour has yet to be activated."

He turned back to the device. "Ah ha! Atraxian manufacture, I thought as much."

"Which means?"

"The wormhole is used to send cyborg shock troops to invade a planet, overcome the local population and then the colonisers sweep in."

"Charming, so these are the shock troops?"

"Yes, I imagine they've based them on a local life-form, magnified the size a little to fit in the electronics and are now waiting for them to reach critical mass before triggering the attack behaviour."

The Doctor began pulling wires out of the machine.

"All I need to do is reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and the spiders will be attracted back through the wormhole. Then you can blow this thing up and all will be sorted."

Ace eyed the spiders warily. Suddenly they all became motionless for a second and then began scuttling into organised rows."

"Umm, Professor, I think the attack signal may have been triggered."

"What? Surely not?"

"Professor?"

Ace gripped her bat more tightly as the nearest row of spiders turned to look at her.

"Just deal with it Ace," the Doctor said. He did not look.

Ace sighed. "You could be a little more help you know."

"I'm very nearly done and this is a very complex piece of rewiring."

"Whatever!"

Ace waited as the first row of spiders converged at the based of the table. Then she jumped down. Her Doc Martens made a satisfying crunching sound as she landed. She started kicking at the rest of the things and using her baseball bat to smash any that were climbing up the sides of the table towards the Doctor.

"Done it!"

And just as suddenly as it had started the spiders lost interest in her. A moment later they began to swarm the machine, disappearing into its innards. The Doctor, rather gingerly climbed down from the table. Somewhat ostentatiously he raised his hat at the spiders as they streamed past him. A couple swerved in his direction and he took a nervous step backwards to stand behind Ace.

She glared at him suspiciously as an outrageous idea dawned upon her. "Are you afraid of spiders?"

"Of course not!"

Ace stood aside and nudged a stray spider in his direction. The Doctor flinched.

"Are you sure you aren't afraid of spiders?"

"I defeated giant spiders on Metebelis Three and dealt with some extremely unpleasant smaller spiders on Alzarius. I am well acquainted with the spider and more than able to deal with."

"Totally afraid of spiders," Ace muttered.

"If it makes you happy to think so," and the Doctor graced her with a beneficent smile.

"You should confront your fear, you know. In some kind of cathartic fashion."

"Well, if you wanted to blow up that machine for me, I wouldn't object."

"Tell you what. I'll set the explosives and you can light the fuse!"

The Doctor smiled at her. "Ace!"


End file.
